Insulin dependent diabetes?

[hisdaughter]

Anyone out there with diabetes? My hubby's been diagnosed with nontype 2 diabetes where his pancreas is failing after his immune system has been attacking it. Doing a great job with carb control and exercise but know it's only a matter of time before he has to take insulin. Anyone using an insulin pump and if so, which brand? Anyone participating in any clinical studies or know of any tried an true natural treatments?

 

[halfwaynowhere]

i don't have diabetes, but my mom does, and i've been to enough doctor visits and such that I know quite a bit about it. She's insulin dependent, uses a mini-med pump. She's gone through a few different pumps over the years, the technology just keeps getting better and better. Hers has an attachment that will test her sugar at regular intervals and relay that information to the pump, but she doesn't use it because its "too bulky". She tests regularly, before meals. Its taken awhile for us to figure out the right dosage (and I say "us" because I was right there with her while trying to get everything figured out). She's been using the pump for as long as I can remember, and has been diabetic since she was 12. Her body has changed over the years, requiring different doses of insulin. Currently she's on a smaller dose than she had been on before, and its working pretty well. At night, its even lower.

As a family member of a diabetic, its important to learn everything, too. Learn the symptoms of high blood sugar as well as low sugar, and how to handle both. Different people will react differently. When my mom's sugar is low, there are a few different ways she'll act. Sometimes she's very complacent. Sometimes she'll argue. Most of the time she'll just agree with what you say without actually knowing what she's saying. A lot of times, its impossible to test her sugar because she's too defiant, which is where glucagon injections come in handy. She'll yell and scream and swear quite a bit and its really hard to hear. Thankfully she's pretty stable now so we don't have to go through that so much anymore, but not that long ago this was something that happened multiple times a week and it was hard to do.

My ex was also an insulin dependent diabetic, although he managed his a lot differently. He rarely tested, took his insulin by injection twice a day, and ate whatever he wanted. He was sick an awful lot, though, and it sure seemed like high blood sugar to me, though he denied it most of the time. I tried encouraging him to take better care of himself, but he was stubborn.

As for other treatments out there. I know City of Hope was working on islet transplant therapy, where they would remove islets from a donor cadaver's pancreas and implant them on a diabetic patient's pancreas. The recipient would need to be on anti-rejection meds, as well as immuno-suppressants for life. The theory there, from my understanding, is that Type-1 diabetes is basically an immune disorder, where the immune system kills off the islets that normally produce insulin. My mom would have been a candidate for this procedure, but she had a myocardial infarction from a high blood sugar episode (her sugar was 1125!).

 

[QH Girl]

My son is a type 1, or juvenile diabetic. He was diagnosed at 3, 8 years ago. We just started pumping last year, on the minimed from medtronic. Medtronic supports their products well, they've overnighted stuff to us before when we had problems. My stepdad has the pods, but I would never switch to them.

His endo should have all of the popular pumps available to try out. That's what we did - we spent 3 days using the minimed and 3 days using the one my animas.

Good luck - it's a long road. http://forums.childrenwithdiabetes.com/ has a subforum for adults that's pretty active.

 

[Chickerdoodle13]

I'm a type 1 and I also use the minimed. I absolutely love it! Sometimes I have trouble with the catheter sites and I don't change them as often as I should because of that, but otherwise I have been able to gain pretty good control of my diabetes since going on the pump. It is good to know how to give shots though because the pump is a machine and can always fail unexpectedly! (Happened to me and it was very scary!) As QH girl said, Medtronic has always been amazing, whether its sending emergency supplies or their customer service.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I've been doing this going on 18 years now so I've been through just about everything!

 

[hisdaughter]

You are all so wonderful for taking the time to share. Thanks so much for the info and wisdom. I hope you all continue to have success with diabetes.

 

[SallyF]

No offense intended, but if you're a school nurse for 16 schools, you already know that there are no "tried and true" natural remedies for Type I diabetes, or there would be no need for insulin pumps. Best wishes for you and your DH in finding the right pump.

 

[Chickerdoodle13]

I think the OP was thinking more natural treatments to help with diabetes. There are a few things that seem to help maintain a good BG including cinnamon and cayenne pepper, but I haven't tried either to actually help my blood sugars. However, I've heard people have good luck putting cinnamon on everything. It's not a replacement for insulin but apparently it helps.